Hi - this is Srinivasan Sampathkumar from Triplicane. I have a passion for Marine Insurance, Cricket and of course Temples especially Thiruvallikkeni.
From Sept 2009, I am posting my thoughts in this blog ; From July 2010, my postings on Temples & Tamil are on my other blog titled "Kairavini Karayinile " (www.tamil.sampspeak.in)
Request you to keep providing your feedback which will help me improve and present better.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

The
history of freedom movement in India, often is summarized in one pithy
sentence: "Mahatma Gandhi gave us freedom through non-violence." For
sure freedom was not that easy and there were so many sacrifices of persons
with varied thought processes. The best and the bravest men and women of an
enslaved nation hastened the demise of the mighty British empire by resisting
them tooth and nail in the trenches of every part of the Nation. They
were brutally crushed by the Imperialist regime and have been relegated, not
getting their due share in history.

Give Me Blood! I Promise You
Freedom!! The British are engaged in a worldwide struggle and in the
course of this struggle they have suffered defeat after defeat on so many
fronts. The enemy having been thus considerably weakened, our fight for liberty
has become very much easier than it was five years ago. Such a rare and
God-given opportunity comes once in a century. That is why we have sworn to
fully utilise this opportunity for liberating our motherland from the British
yoke. The first phase of our campaign is over. Our victorious troops,
fighting side by side with Nipponese troops, have pushed back the enemy and are
now fighting bravely on the sacred soil of our dear motherland.

~ excerpts
of speech addressed at a rally of Indians in Burma, July 4, 1944 – the very
famous words of one of the greatest sons of this soil - Subhas Chandra
Bose, very popularly known as Nethaji (lit. "Respected
Leader"). From history books, we read that the great person Nethaji
was born on 23rd Jan 1897 and lived till 18th Aug
1945 [this will remain disputed as the Nation yearns to know of the reality,
the mystery shrouding his disappearance !] : do you where was
he born ? – it was not West Bengal, for sure. **

the man, the rebel with a
cause, for sure was brilliant, innovative and out of the box – in 1942, in
Berlin, – six months after Adolf Hitler
had assured Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose that he could travel to Japan, he was
still stuck in Germany. It was at that time, Emilie Schenkl gave birth to their daughter,
Anita. But duty beckoned the warrior. On February 8, 1943, Bose bade them
farewell and boarded a German U-180 boat. He would not see them again.

declassified file on Nethaji & a letter communication on his sword

Seriously, there was some
interesting news in Nov 1987,that
Rs.114 crores, a whooping sum at that time had been transferred from Burma, Japan
and Singapore for construction of Netaji Memorial in Delhi !! There has been a
controversy for decades as to whether the account of the plane crash is true,
despite two Indian government investigations concluding that is how Bose met
his end.In 1969, Member of Parliament
Samar Guha wrote to the then West Bengal chief secretary M M Basu about a
“sensational report” of Netaji’s survival. Based on the letter, Basu had
directed the state government’s home secretary to conduct a probe into the
claims. The report Guha refers to an article that appeared in Jugantar which
claims that a police officer had seen Netaji board a submarine in Singapore,
not a plane, along with two Japanese officers. The officer went on to say that
Netaji left his sword with him before leaving Singapore.

Interestingly,
do you know that he was conferred with Bharat Ratna but the award was
subsequently withdrawn. The award was
established by the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad, on January 2,
1954. The original statutes did not make allowance for posthumous awards but
later added in 1955 statute. Subsequently, there have been ten posthumous
awards, including the award to Subhash Chandra Bose in 1992, which was later
withdrawn due to a legal technicality, the only case of an award being
withdrawn. It was withdrawn in response to a Supreme Court
of India directive following a Public Interest Litigation filed in
the Court against the “posthumous” nature of the award. The Award Committee
could not give conclusive evidence of Bose’s death and thus it invalidated the
“posthumous” award.

An UK website set up
to catalogue the last days of Subhas Chandra Bose released the evidence given
by a Taiwanese official who claimed to have prepared Netaji’s body for
cremation after his death in a plane crash in 1945. The testimony, contained in
UK Foreign Office file No FC1852/6 and dating back to 1956, is among the last
few documents released by
http://www.bosefiles.info set up to establish that the Indian freedom fighter
died in the crash on the outskirts of an airfield in Taipei on August 18, 1945.
However, “Taiwanese official Tan Ti-Ti,
who was in charge of issuing cremation permits in Taipei, together with that of
other local officials, tries put to rest
any controversy about the last rites performed on Subhas Bose’s body,” the
website said. Those reports suggest
that a Japanese army officer who
accompanied the body told Ti-Ti: “The deceased was Bose, the Indian leader (on
occasions he mentioned him as the Indian commander) who, proceeding to Tokyo on
important business, was injured when his plane was involved in an accident.”

Now to the Q– on his birth place : it is
the city of Cuttack, centred on a spit of land between the Kathajodi River and
the Mahanadi River, bounded on the southeast by Old Jagannath Road. It is
less than 30 km from the State capital of Odisha, Bhubaneswar. It was
here our hero, Nethaji Subash Chandra Bose was born. Bose was born on 23rd Jan
1897 at Oriya bazaar to Janaki Nath Bose, a famous lawyer and Prabhavati
Devi. The place known as Janakinath Bhawan, is now a museum and
showcases the original letters written by Netaji along with other important
materials used by Netaji.